Percy and Simpson sail the flag at Rolex Miami OCR

Notes from Iain Percy and Andrew Simpson at the Rolex Miami Olympic Classes Regatta where they are sailing and tuning their latest Star boat.

Well, we’re here in Miami for the Rolex Miami Olympic Classes Regatta – a main fixture in the international Star sailing calendar, and one which always attracts some of the biggest names in the fleet.

For Team Percy-Simpson, however, reaching the podium at this event is not high on our list of priorities – of course it’s always nice to leave a regatta with some silverware to show for your efforts, but we’re racing our brand new boat out here which literally arrived just a few days ago, so we’ve got plenty on our hands making sure she’s fully primed for racing.

Unlike some of the other less technical Olympic boats, there’s a hell of a lot of testing and tuning that comes with owning a new Star, so we’ll be putting her through her paces out on the race course at this regatta, making some adjustments as we go through the week so that we’re hopefully in a position to make speed improvements and winning some races as the week goes on.

Right now our heads are far too much inside the boat while we get used to all its little nuances, instead of outside of the boat where it needs to be to make all the tactical racing decisions, but ultimately we hope she’s going to be a weapon on the racecourse!

Results-wise, we had a bit of an up and down first day, with a 13 and a 5 on the scoreboard. There are two races scheduled each day until to Friday, with the top ten boats then going through to the final medal race on Saturday (2 February).